“Operation Jailbreak proved what’s possible when industry, government, and academia stop working in silos and start working as one team,” Lt. Gen. Frank Lozano, the Army’s Portfolio Acquisition Executive (PAE) for Fires, said in the release.
Reveille Forge: an Integrated Development Environment at Redstone Arsenal
The Army has opened a new operational facility called Reveille Forge, formally described as an Integrated Development Environment (IDE), to bring service members, industry and academia together to integrate their products with existing government-owned equipment supporting integrated air and missile defense systems. The facility will be “fully operated by PAE Fires out of Redstone Arsenal, in Alabama,” the service announcement said.
Army officials framed Reveille Forge as a permanent space for what the service calls “hackathons” — practices the release clarifies as reworking or eliminating manufacturer software restrictions on systems — and said the IDE can operate independently or be folded into future “jailbreak sprints.”
Roots in Operation Jail Break and the API marketplace
Reveille Forge builds directly on a recent sprint the Army held called Operation Jail Break, which the release said concluded last month and in which vendors partnered to open up the interfaces of legacy and new equipment to make them interoperable and share data. The Army described Reveille Forge as “institutionalizing that momentum.”
The IDE also complements an Application Programming Interface (API) marketplace the Army stood up in May. That marketplace is described as a forum where industry can “securely” publish their interfaces for others to review, which the service said “enables faster collaboration.”
The integration and testing pathway inside Reveille Forge
The announcement sets out a staged process for moving vendor capabilities through the IDE. The first step requires vendors to demonstrate that their product can be interoperable within established government-owned platforms — although the Army “did not specify which specific platforms it is interested in integrating.”
After initial demonstrations, the IDE moves integrations into a “capability review” phase where government stakeholders will hold “formal capability discussions” to decide whether an integration aligns with an operational goal. Official testing follows, and the release says “[s]uccessful performance” in testing may lead to “even more testing, acquisition decisions or ‘other government actions consistent with applicable laws, regulations, and competition requirements.’”
The PAE emphasized that it will work with both new and existing interested vendors through “appropriate government-approved mechanisms.”
Voices from PAE Fires
Two senior figures in PAE Fires were quoted describing the new facility and its intent. Lt. Gen. Frank Lozano framed Reveille Forge as the institutional continuation of the collaboration seen in Operation Jail Break. Jeannie Sommer, director of integrated fires within PAE Fires, said the IDE changes when integration happens in the development cycle: “With Reveille Forge, system integration is the first thing we do, not the last.”
Sommer added that proving a capability inside the Army’s architecture will “earn a fast path to a capability review and testing, which may ultimately get new technology into Soldiers’ hands faster.”
What this means for vendors, PAE Fires, and Soldiers
- Vendors: They must demonstrate interoperability with government-owned platforms as a first step, and can publish interfaces to the Army’s May-launched API marketplace to “securely” share and accelerate collaboration; successful demonstrations may earn a “fast path” to capability review and testing.
- PAE Fires: Will operate the IDE at Redstone Arsenal, manage the staged capability reviews and testing, and coordinate vendor engagement through “appropriate government-approved mechanisms.”
- Soldiers: The Army frames Reveille Forge as a mechanism to move proven capabilities more quickly toward operational use — if vendors can show their systems “work inside our architecture,” those systems may advance faster through evaluation.
Reveille Forge is the Army’s attempt to take the sprint mentality of a recent Operation Jail Break and make it permanent: an IDE tied to an API marketplace, run by PAE Fires at Redstone Arsenal, where interoperability is required early and successful demonstrations can feed structured capability reviews and formal testing. The release leaves some specifics open — notably which government-owned platforms will be the focus of early integration efforts — but it sets a clear sequence: demonstrate interoperability, undergo formal discussion, and then test, where “[s]uccessful performance” can lead to acquisition or other government actions.
